I can’t beleive I’m already hearing the crunch of almond shells under my feet as I tend the potager. Was it really 8 months ago that I posted photos of the beautiful almond blossoms? That crunch tells me its time to start harvesting; I’m a lazy harvester and like to leave all the hard work to mother nature, who usually uses a nice big storm to shake the trees and send the almond shells hurtling towards the ground. Said storm happened last week and the recent sun and wind has dried the land and the shells nicely, so perfect time to gather them.

We have four almond trees on our land: a large one hovering over the potager hence the noise underfoot as I tend it. Two on the other side of the front garden and a small one overlooking the pool area, so plenty to harvest.

The tree over the potager heavy with husks.

The almonds have fallen and have dried off in the sun, helped by the warm winds.

I have a little system for harvesting the almonds, firstly i gather them, then take all the husks off, then you have to check them over to see if any bugs have started to bore holes in the shells, then shake them to see if the fruit has died and separated from the shell, lastly pop them into a net bag.

The last few steps are done sitting in my lovely old garden chair….

The rewards of my hard work a nice big bag full of almonds, this is just the first harvest off one tree.

Its been a busy summer here at Maison Mûrier, we have had lots of fabulous guests staying and amazing weather for us all to enjoy.

Trying to do work in the hot weather is almost impossible, unless you like getting up at 6am to avoid the sun, we aren’t early birds, so have only done that a few times.

We have had the odd cloudy day and have taken advantage of the clouds to crack on with the decking around the pool and the railings surrounding it.

The last few days have been much cooler so we have really cracked on with the railings and here’s what we have done so far.

We have managed to put the railings up around the whole area of the deck that is finished.

We thought it was going to be really difficult to fix the railings in place but Kev came up with a relatively simple solution of using long metal rods attached from the back to the existing rods, before they are attached to each other, they are hammered into the ground, roughly 1.5 meters deep.

The design of the panels is lovely and the colour fits really well with all the foliage.

Each of the railing panels had to be welded together and thats where Ian fabulous skills have come in handy, off cuts of metal are used to fuse each panel together. The results are really sturdy panels.

I found these old metal urns at the brocante market today, they were covered in black soot as they were used for washing clothes, they would have been sat on a huge fire, the clothes being boiled inside them.

With a bit of hard labour sanding them to get rid of the soot they have come up a treat, i varnished them to bring out the colour and markings.